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Shoppers, Please Don’t’ Fight At The Mall. Play Mallopoly Instead!

The holidays are coming in full swing and that can only mean one thing – Malls. If you are like me, you’re not overly excited to brave this crazy world for hours on end. Crying babies, screaming kids, frustrated shoppers and too much perfume can give anyone a headache. Also like me, you might get a bit disturbed by the fighting that seems to have become a Black (eye) Friday tradition.

Have no fear…. Point Inside is here to calm your nerves and bring a little more fun to the holiday shopping experience. They are adding to the holiday spirit with the upcoming launch of a new in-app game, Mallopoly, inside the Point Inside Shopping & Travel app. Players can win a $100 American Express Gift Card through a daily random drawing between now and Dec. 31, 2011. Players can also win the $1000 Grand Prize gift card to be drawn on Jan. 2, 2012.

Point Inside helps retailers increase sales and profits by engaging customers in real-time using micro-location, indoor mapping, personalized content and apps. They must have the right idea, Google seems to be thinking the same thing, although I doubt Google has created a cool game of Mallopoly for holiday shoppers. The game play is pretty simple. Players gain entries into the drawing for the following:

• By claiming a place in the app, such as a store or restaurant (one place per day)

• When your place page is viewed (one view per place page per person per day)

• By sharing the app with a friend (one share is counted per day)

Playing the game requires updating to version 3.1 of the Point Inside Shopping & Travel app. The Android version will be live Tuesday; iPhone app should be live by the end of the week. Press release is below.

Mallopoly™ Game to Launch within Point Inside Shopping & Travel App

Players can claim places within the app to be eligible to win daily $100 prizes and $1000 Grand Prize

Bellevue, WA — November 30, 2011 —Point Inside, Inc. (www.pointinside.com) today announced the launch of the Holiday Edition of its new in-app game, Mallopoly™. By “claiming” places in the app, such as Nordstrom in Bellevue Square Mall, players become eligible to win the Daily Prize of $100 and the Grand Prize of $1000. Players receive additional entries in the random drawing when another person visits their place inside the app or the player shares the app with another person.

“This is an exciting step forward in evolution of our shopping and travel app,” says Josh Marti, CEO at Point Inside. “We’ve had a tremendously positive response when we launched the latest version of Point Inside Shopping & Travel app with hundreds of thousands of deals. Now we’re creating a completely new level of shopper engagement by adding a very rewarding game to the app.”

The gameplay and rules are simple. A player gets an entry into the daily drawing when they “claim” one of the millions of places in the Point Inside app. Additional entries are gained from people visiting that place and sharing the app with friends. Winners for the daily $100 American Express Gift Card are randomly drawn from the previous day’s entries. All entries through December 31, 2011, are eligible for the Grand Drawing of a $1000 American Express Gift Card. Mallopoly starts Monday, November 28, and is available immediately for Android platforms; iPhone will be available shortly following iTunes App Store approval.

“This Holiday Edition of Mallopoly is the first of many for the game. We see it as another way to make more shoppers aware of great deals in both their local areas and in the stores they like,” says Marti.

The Point Inside Shopping & Travel app features include:

Hundreds of thousands of deals by location and venue, such as a specific mall or selected geographic areas

Special offers from national brands and local retailers

Listings of millions of retailers searchable by location and category including clothing and electronics

In-venue navigation features with routing

Maps of over 1300 shopping malls, airports, theme parks and other points of interest.

Store and shop directory information including store hours, contact information and special events

Point Inside has transformed the shopping experience by enabling retailers to engage proactively with customers through their smartphones at every point along the purchase path. Mobile apps driven by the Point Inside Interact™ platform increase sales, loyalty and customer satisfaction from initial research and product discovery to the creation of shopping lists and in-store activities. This new level of customer engagement is made possible through Point Inside’s patent-pending technologies in indoor mapping, micro-location services and customer engagement.

Point Inside also offers consumers a free mobile application, Point Inside for Shopping and Travel., on iOS and Android devices. Users can quickly find stores, gates, kiosks, restrooms, elevators, escalators, and other guest services in over 1300 malls, airports, theme parks and other venues.

Founded in 2009 and based just outside of Seattle, the company is led by a team of executives with decades of experience developing mobile and location-based services (LBS) applications for companies such as Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, and Qualcomm. Additional details can be found at: www.pointinside.com; Facebook: www.facebook.com/PointInside; Twitter: www.twitter.com/PointInside.